A Reflection: by Abed Nadir
by I'llbeyourmirror
Summary: After graduation day, Abed reflects on the... complicated nature of the group's romantic entanglements. I wrote it to see how many pairings I could work into one story, so your favorite is probably in it!


**A/N- ****Um. I forgot about Pierce. Sorry guys. I may add him in later, but I'm just too tired now. Also, I wrote this in the space of about 3 hours and I didn't go back and read it, so I apologize if it's crappy or doesn't make any sense. ****  
**

We all just graduated with our bachelor's degrees… from Community College. Everything has this strange finale vibe. Just hours ago, I was standing there watching my friends receive their diplomas. Jeff was wearing pajama pants to prove how not-a-big-deal our graduation was to him, but I'm fairly certain he got a little choked up after the ceremony when he congratulated all of us on getting out of Greendale. He literally said, "Congratulations to all of us on," and here is where he had a quick catch in his throat, "making it out of this hellhole."

"Isn't this nice?" Shirley said with tears streaming down her face.

"It's been an interesting four years." Britta chimed in, trying to contort her involuntarily drooping face into a celebratory grin.

"You guys are awesome. I'm gonna miss this place." Troy was bawling unashamedly.

"I can't wait to see where we're all going!" Annie was genuinely hopeful and optimistic, but there was an undeniable fear in her eyes.

"I just hope I can find more cool, black friends." Pierce was really concerned about this.

I didn't say anything. I was trying to place a good reference, but the only one I could think of was High School Musical 3, and I was NOT about to say that out loud. I'm much better at relating and communicating these days, though. I still like my pop culture references, but I don't need them anymore. I'm still me. I'm quirky, strange and dangerously genre-savvy, but I guess you could say I'm more accessible now. More viewer-friendly, maybe? I've changed a lot. I have a film degree now. I'm following in the footsteps of most famous filmmakers and moving to LA. I scored a lowly job working as an assistant to an indie director. That's how show business is. You start at the bottom and you work your way up as far as you can go. I'm okay with it all, because I know I'm going far.

I'm by myself right now. I'm getting ready to leave my dorm forever. It's unnerving being between stages of life. I feel like I'm preparing for a spinoff or something. Nostalgia isn't generally my thing, but I just can't help but flash back on all our little study group has been through in the past 4 years.

Britta just got her degree in Sociology. She was planning on finding work with a non-profit organization, but instead she ended up buying a small building and setting up a fair trade coffee shop instead. It opens soon and there' s no way it won't be swarming with hipsters shortly. Britta feels guilty about it sometimes, but it's probably for the best. Being a barista/small business owner has a lot more comedic potential than a cubicle job with a struggling charity.

Britta's still vegetarian and ever the all-talk-and-considerably-less-game activist, and that's what we love about her. However, she's a lot more vulnerable and comfortable now than she was 4 years ago. I mean, she still has her frightened porcupine moments, but she's generally open and honest with us. It's sad, because she's had her heart broken several times in the course of her college experience, but it always makes you a better person in the end. At least that's what they say in the movies. The first time was when Jeff chose Annie over her at the end of our first year. I remember everything. I do have an alarmingly accurate memory…

"What the hell, Jeff? I put myself out there for you, and you get with my best friend who happens to be HALF YOUR AGE?"

"Look, Britta. I'm sorry. I really am. I feel like a douche right now..."

"Well, good… 'Cause you _are_ a douche."

"But I can't help that I don't love you. I like Annie a lot. I can't control that. You think I actually _want_ to be attracted to a 19 year old? It feels dirty. But it also feels right and that's just out of my hands."

"Well… You… I…"

"I'm not lying when I say I'm sorry. The last thing I want is to hurt you."

"Well if you really cared that much, you wouldn't have left me hanging to make out with Little Miss We-Try-Not-To-Sexualize-Her Edison!"

"I don't know what else I can say."

"Just… Leave me alone, okay? I'll be fine eventually. I'm a big girl. But I just need some time to hurt."

They still don't know I witnessed that exchange. I realize now that it's deemed creepy by society for me to hide and watch these dramatic one-on-one encounters, but at the time, I was just interested in getting some good drama out of it.

I don't know why, but Britta turned to me for solace at the beginning of our second year. I've always admired Britta. She's strong and independent and I like that in a leading lady. I guess you could say I always had a little crush on her. So a dejected, heartbroken Britta starts turning to me for comfort and you can imagine where that cliché plotline leads. We barely lasted longer than Jeff and Annie (which was just a few months), but we had a good time together. We would just hang out with Troy and make videos. She would make me mix CDs and introduced me to Radiohead, Interpol and Regina Spektor among others. She helped me a great deal with my learning to relate to other people. Just being in an intimate relationship was a big step in my character development toward audience accessibility.

I can read almost anyone like a book, so I knew when things were over before Britta herself realized.

"Britta, we need to talk."

"Sure thing, Abed. What's up?"

"Annie and Jeff broke up a couple weeks ago."

"Uh. Yeah. I'm glad, 'cause that was uber creepy, but what does that have to do with us?"

"Look, you may not see it yet, but you were with me as a buffer to ease the pain of watching Jeff with Annie. I've always liked you a lot, so that was enough for me. I don't mind being your Plan B. But Jeff is available now, and he's the one you really want."

"Abed, don't say things like that! I really like you. Really, I do."

"I know, Britta. But it's just not enough. This is for the best and I think you know it. And believe me, this is way more painful for me than it is for you."

It only took her a week or two to get over it. She was confused and crushed at first, but eventually she realized that I was right. She and Jeff had another brief, nondescript thing, but for some reason or another, they decided not to get serious. And that was when Lillian entered the picture- at around our 3rd year. Lillian was a girl Britta met at some concert and went home with after drinking too much beer. I hate to reinforce the media's stereotypes of lesbian relationships, but there was just no way those two were going to stop at a one-night stand. They bonded over their love of alternative music and faux leather jackets. Lillian was vegan, of course. We didn't see much of her, but we met her a couple times. She was ridiculously cool and was exactly the kind of person you'd imagine Britta with. After our first year Tranny Dance, Britta admitted that she didn't actually love Jeff. She never said that she loved me. But she was very much in love with Lillian and she was open about it, too. It took a while for Shirley to come around, but she did, eventually when she realized how happy Britta was. But of course, as fate would have it, Lillian's job transferred her to Boston and after about two months of long-distance dating, she broke it off and shattered poor Britta's heart.

That summer, Annie asked Britta some innocently curious questions which inevitably led to a one-time hookup between the two. They tried desperately to keep it undercover, but I have a knack for figuring these things out. I promised them I wouldn't tell the others, though. I caught them talking frantically in a corner of the study room one afternoon shortly after summer break.

"Something's up with you two."

"What? No!" Britta's eyes were too wide and her voice was too loud.

"Where do you get these crazy ideas, Abed?" Annie looked about to jump into a river.

"Yesterday, you didn't speak or make eye contact at all, and today, you put extra emphasis on how you're best friends… Almost as if you realized that the silent treatment wasn't getting the right message across, so you changed your tactics. You're hiding something about the nature of your relationship."

Annie's eyelashes were trying desperately to reach her hairline. "Relationship? What relationship? NO ONE KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT, ABED!"

"Aha! There it is. You two have been hooking up over the summer."

"Not_ hooking_ up. Just once."

"BRITTA!"

"Oh… woops. Look_, Annie _came over and wanted to know some pretty strangely specific things and starts asking me about them, so one thing led to another, and…"

"You could have just _told_ me what I wanted to know! You didn't have to _show _me! Don't try to pin this on me!"

They started yelling at each other simultaneously and I had no idea what they were saying, so I stepped in. "Look, you two. You hooked up once and that's it. I won't tell anyone. Not even Troy. Just don't let it affect your friendship, okay? You guys were best friends. Sometimes things happen in the heat of the moment, but don't let that tear you apart."

They just looked at me, nodded, hugged and from then on, things were pretty much back to normal except for when Pierce would make inappropriate lesbian jokes about the two of them, and Britta would fly off the handle and Annie would look down and turn bright red. No one else ever seemed to notice, though.

Jeff and Britta are together, now. In a serious, committed relationship. Neither wants to get married ever because of course marriage is "an outdated and pointless institution," but they got an apartment together after about 4 months of officially dating and have been living together ever since and probably will be for years and years to come. Of course, Britta was wary of entering a serious relationship after being crushed so many times, but I think Jeff makes her feel safe and secure and so she eventually took that leap. It was meant to be. They were just going to keep coming back to each other between the others, anyway. Shortly after the Britta/Annie incident, we all ended up discussing our sexual history with each other, and boy was it crazy.

"I think it's a true testament to our group bond that so much shit has gone down and we're still best friends," Jeff was saying

Troy was nodding fervently. "I'm just glad you guys aren't all over me like everyone was in high school. That was so annoying. Like, 'Troy! My older sister's throwing an awesome party. Wanna come?' 'Troy! Would you come here and teach me how to play pool?' 'Troy! Come have sex with me in this Janitor's closet!'"

"Sure thing, Troy," Britta said, indulging him. "It's really fucked up when you think about it. I mean, our giant, tangled web of sexual interaction." A weird silence took over, and all of us started exchanging looks with our former and current sexual partners. Some were awkward, some nostalgic and some sweet. Jeff turned to look at Britta, and I could see that in that moment, both of them realized one thing: that each was the best the other ever had- that they were meant to be.

I know I was right, because a week later, they were together and not just in a casual-sex-on-the-study-table capacity.

Troy ended up majoring in Theater Tech. It definitely was not what any of us expected out of alpha male T-Bone from first year. He got a job offer with a local theater in lighting and sound. He still hasn't decided whether or not he wants to take it. He's thought about moving to "somewhere far away that's more exciting and has more girls… like Denver! Or Canada!" Oh, Troy. He's grown so much, yet he's still so the same.

Troy was a serial dater all through college. He was always getting with and breaking up with girls. A lot of them we would never know beyond a name that we would hear on occasion for a couple of weeks. I'm Troy's best friend, and even I didn't meet most of them. It was more of a validation thing for Troy. He seems confident, but he's actually quite insecure, fulfilling the typical high school jock archetype from teen movies and television.

Troy and I never lived together (we didn't want to jump the friendship shark), but he would come over and spend the night at my dorm all the time after movie nights, late study sessions or keggers. One night during our second year (while I was still with Britta, no less), we both got plastered and Troy was far too incapacitated to make it home. Neither of us could make it up on my bunk beds, so we just curled up on the floor. We were facing each other and discussing… something. It's really all very hazy. All I remember is Troy leaning in to kiss me and it just seeming like the most normal and reasonable thing at the time. We woke up the next morning, and Troy remembered before I did. He started crying, actually, and ran outside without a word. I was confused for a while, but I eventually remembered what had happened. I called Troy. He didn't answer. I wanted to explain to him that people who are as close as we are often resort to experimentation (because, let's face it, when you have this kind of connection with someone, occasionally you wonder if it could be more), and that drunken homosexual encounters with one's best friend is a sitcom staple, and that it doesn't have to tear us apart or make things painfully awkward. He wouldn't have understood that, though. So I just left him a voicemail telling him to calm down because nothing counts when you're drunk. I got a text from him shortly after.

_Really? It doesn't count? So we can pretend it never happened?_

_Absolutely. Don't worry about it. I've forgotten what we're talking about already._

_Okay. See you in Antropullogee, then._

We had been in that class for almost a whole semester, and he still couldn't spell it.

Troy's longest relationship was with Annie. That really isn't saying much, though. They were together for maybe 4 months out of our third year. It was bound to happen eventually because Troy and Annie are both serial daters. Troy because he needs to feel like a stud, and Annie because she's just so pretty and intelligent and driven and adorably self-conscious and everyone wants to be with her. They were cute together, for sure, but Troy's ego just didn't go over so well with Annie and eventually things blew up. Troy and I were watching KickPuncher 4 when Annie stormed in…

"TROY!"

"Uh, look, babe. I'm watching a movie right now. Remember what I told you about Abed time? Something about not interrupting it, maybe?"

"Ugh! See that's just it! You're so… so… self-absorbed and arrogant! Do you even care about me at all?"

"Of course I care about you. I care that you're hot and I care that you make all the guys jealous of me for having you."

"Troy, I wrote you handwritten letter and I framed this picture of us and I was going to give them to you tonight for our 4 month anniversary… but you didn't show!"

"Oh… snap. I forgot about that. Baby, I'm sorry, I'll-"

"I am NOT your baby, Troy Barnes! This is over. You'll never truly care about me, and I'm not breaking my back to make you." And with that she turned on her heel and marched out the door.

"Ha! Women. Let's get back to this movie."

Troy was in denial about his breakup for a couple days. According to him, it just didn't make sense that Annie would let him go like that. He eventually accepted it and moved on. He and Annie are just friends now, but whenever Troy tells the story, he says that _he_ broke up with _her_ for being too clingy.

He's still full of himself and out of touch with reality, but to a lesser extent than before. I think Annie opened his eyes to the rest of the world a little more. He really did care about her. He just didn't know how to express it. He didn't even realize that he was supposed to. He's better at it now. I mean, he's better at caring for and thinking of people other than himself and me. I'm really proud of him.

Troy had a thing for Britta for a long time. He didn't disclose it all to me until after I broke up with her, and even then I didn't know much. Only recently did Troy tell me what actually went down between them. Troy was attracted to Britta for pretty much the same reasons I was. I'm a few years older than Troy, so I guess Britta was okay with being with me, but she just wasn't comfortable with dating Troy. He _is_ a good 10 years younger than her. He made passes at her whenever she wasn't with someone, but it never happened. She told him once while they found themselves alone in the parking lot one night that she found him physically attractive and that his simplicity was endearing and his cockiness amusing. However, she was not okay with the age difference. At least, this is what Troy told me. There's a very good chance he was making a lot of it up. According to Troy, he kissed Britta once that night and it was "dope," but she told him that was as far as it could go. Besides, Britta was so uncomfortable with Annie being with Jeff, it would have been most hypocritical for her to go and date Troy.

Britta taught Troy that he wasn't irresistible and that he wasn't the exception to the rule. Getting his heart crushed brought him down a peg or two. He's much less arrogant and presumptuous now, but of course he retains his signature cockiness. I'm confident that Annie and Britta made Troy a better person and that he'll have much more luck with future ladies because of it.

Shirley received her degree in entrepreneurship and her baked goods company is well on its way. She even has plans to supply Britta's coffee shop. Shirley is more accepting and less judgmental, but basically the same as before. I wish I had more to say about her romantic entanglements, but they've been fairly few and far between.

She started dating Sexy Dreadlocks for a while. I don't think any of us but her knows his real name. Things were going great for them, initially. He would take her kids out to baseball games and would listen to her trash her ex-husband. Eventually, however, he showed his true colors when he broke up with her when she said she wouldn't have sex with a man unless they were engaged and nothing could change her mind on that fact. He said it was because he needed time and space to himself, but his real reason was obvious. Things had been going almost perfectly between them up until that point. I still remember when Shirley first came into the library after the breakup.

"Shirley, what's wrong?" Annie was always the sympathetic one.

"He dumped me!" Shirley started crying. "I've been trying to hold it together for my boys, but I can't do it anymore."

"Shirley, I don't know what went down, but I promise you we're here to be moral support through it all." Jeff spoke for the group.

"Oh, that's nice, but I need to go the bathroom right now." She rushed off and Annie and Britta followed.

About half an hour later, Britta returned.

"Annie's taking Shirley home. She needed some alone time."

Oh dears and poor Shirleys echoed around the table

"Did she tell you what exactly happened?" Troy asked, visibly concerned.

"That asshole ditched her because he couldn't respect that she wanted to wait until she was engaged to have sex."

"Well, I think that's perfectly reasonable. I mean, that's why I divorced my fourth wife." I was expecting Pierce would say that.

"For not having sex with you until you were engaged?"

"For not respecting my sexual needs above her own. What else are women for?"

We all glared at him until we realized it was time for class.

Shirley just started seeing another man from her church who seems quite respectable and perfect for her. He doesn't hang around us much. I suppose that's understandable as we don't exactly model ideal Christian behavior. But Shirley's happy and I really do hope it all works out for her. Everyone will agree with me when I say she deserves it.

Jeff Winger is set to resume his work at his old law firm in August. His degree is in Communications because that was supposedly the easiest major. His extra money will be a big help to Britta while she tries to get her coffee shop on its feet. Jeff is confident and has plenty of self-esteem, but he doesn't get called a douche as often as he did before and he doesn't try to play puppet-master to us anymore.

When Jeff and Annie were together, it went phenomenally well at first. In Jeff's own words to me, "It's like she's introducing me to a new way of seeing the world full of wonder and optimism that I've never experienced before."

And in Annie's, "He makes me feel secure and grown-up. I tend to get caught up in ridiculous things, and he's always there to anchor me to the ground, you know?"

They were coming from completely different places in life. It made for an exciting relationship for a while. They were learning so much from each other. Additionally, the feeling of knowing no one really approved of their relationship and that they were doing it anyway added a sense of defiance and even persecution that intensified the experience. However, you can't really expect a jaded, late-30s ex-lawyer to have a successful long-term relationship with a naïve, 19 year old schoolgirl. Annie told me everything and this is how she explained their relationship:

"I really was smitten with Jeff. I mean, he's so cool and I was always the loser. I was just so astonished that he actually could like me, you know? It was overwhelming. I was head-over-heels. Eventually, though, I realized there's a reason relationships with such huge age differences rarely work out. We were coming from almost opposite directions and we were looking for completely different things. I was young and silly and looking for my true love. Jeff was looking for a casual, low-key relationship. Our ideas of what a relationship should look like were completely different, too. I would want to go down to the park and get ice cream. Jeff would want to watch Law and Order for the 4th hour straight. I'd ask him why we couldn't do something fun like Vaughn and I used to do and Jeff would say because he wasn't a shirtless hippie or a little girl. If I wanted to pick flowers and make friendship bracelets with my boyfriend, he would say, I should have gone to Delaware with Vaughn. It just kind of fell apart."

Jeff was pretty beat up after he and Annie broke up. It wasn't because he was heartbroken over losing her or anything. He was just really upset that he let himself be in such an irresponsible relationship. In the heat of the moment, the age difference seemed like something they could work through, but in the end, that proved to be overly idealistic thinking and he just didn't understand how he got caught up in it all. I did. I explained to him that he really liked Annie enough to throw caution to the wind and that that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It happens sometimes. People fall in love and so they do stupid things. Everything was going to be okay I told him. And it was. One great thing about our group is that none of our relationships ever ended badly. We were all able to carry on as best friends.

Jeff and Britta have been on-again/off-again since the inception of our study group. I'm really glad they're happy together, now. Britta is where he always belonged, and he kind of always knew that. With Britta, there are no lies, no fear of getting too close, no having to hide his hipster music, no need to worry if his treatment of her is "age-appropriate." It's just them. Just her. Britta is his home. Whatever he goes through, she's always there inviting him in for witty banter or a Die Hard movies marathon or an Urban Outfitters online shopping session. Jeff Winger never had any desire to settle down until he found the perfect place to settle into. That was unintentionally sexual.

Little Annie Edison has a degree in political science and is gearing up to go to law school next fall. She's gained a great deal of confidence and learned a lot about the world. She's still a little naïve because she's Annie, but she can fend for herself now. We don't worry about her as much.

Even though Annie would have rather gone to the park to get ice cream than watched Law and Order for hours on end, she did learn a lot from those shows and from listening to her (now ex) boyfriend talk about his lawyer days. Things started coming together for her after that. Her love of debating, her intense personality, her driven and intellectual nature. She was meant to be a lawyer. Not a morally gray, shady defense attorney. She was going to be a prosecutor. That was probably another thing that drove a wedge between her and Jeff when they were dating.

In addition to discovering her life's calling through her relationship with Jeff, it was a huge boost to her self-esteem. No matter what happened from there on out, she was still the girl heartless Jeff Winger fell hard for. She _was_ cool and she _was_ pretty and now she knew it for a fact. She wasn't snotty about it, of course. Annie doesn't have it in her to be snotty. She was just confident. She could walk the halls with her head held high because she, Little Annie Adderal, was someone.

Her relationship with Troy was a lot of fun while it lasted. He frustrated her to no end, but they had the craziest times. If Annie said she wanted to go the park and get ice cream, Troy would borrow his cousin's motorcycle, injure himself doing stunts on the swing set and then challenge her to an ice cream eating contest (and lose due to a brain freeze). Annie had never enjoyed her time with someone so much before. This time was different from her first year crush. Before, she just liked Troy because he was the "cool" guy. This time around, she had already been with the "cool" guy. This time, she was with Troy because he made her laugh and took her on adventures. She was glad when it ended, though. Troy was just a big baby sometimes and it was hard to handle. I liked them together, but I understood her reasons for breaking up with him. After I said that to Troy, I had to reassure him for months that I wasn't going to break up with him myself.

Oh! Annie just walked into my room.

"Hey, Annie. What are you doing here? It's 1 am."

"I know. I came to get you. Come on, we're going to IHOP to celebrate!"

"Celebrate what? And why IHOP? " Ever since I saw 500 Days of Summer, I've been wary of going out for pancakes with the girl I love.

"I chose a law school! I'm going to Pepperdine University School of Law!"

"What about Columbia? Or Chicago? I haven't even heard of Pepperdine."

"Oh, well I just always wanted to live near LA is all."

"LA? Annie, are you doing this for me?"

"No! Of course not. Like I said, I just really want to be near LA."

"Thanks, Annie."

"Whatever. I'll be in my car, meet me there when you're ready."

I probably should mention that Annie and I are together now. I don't really know how it happened. It just did. We've been together for 6 months now. It's the happiest either of us has ever been. It's funny how these things happen sometimes. Annie says I'm like a mix of all the best things from her other boyfriends (e.g. Jeff's confidence, Troy's fun-loving personality, Vaughn's relaxed, easygoing demeanor, etc.), but it's completely different. We connect on a level neither of us has ever experienced before. It seems strange that it took us so long to discover it. I was worried for a little while that life would separate us after Greendale and I didn't know what would be the best thing to do. But right now, I'm just thrilled. Annie will be close to me, and believe me when I say I'm not ever going to let her go. I may not be as socially astute as Jeff and Troy, but in this situation, I'm a hell of a lot smarter.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my girlfriend and I are going to go celebrate our future over pancakes.


End file.
